South America

The Bolivian Tax Office (SIN in its Spanish acronym) has closed the 2012 period with a total tax collection of 37,459.5 million bolivianos (5,421.34 million US dollars), a total which represents an increase of 24% with respect to what was…

The United Nations has recognized a Brazilian Dominican friar, Frei Betto, with a leading international prize for his “exceptional contribution” to building a universal culture of peace, social justice and human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Director-General…

Tamara Adrián Hernández is a transsexual activist living in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. However, what actually makes her stand out is her career as a professor in a faculty of law and as an active lawyer. She is a…

Argentina’s new law on Audiovisual Communication Services (SCA), known in Spanish as the Ley de Medios, is due to enter fully into force tomorrow. Reporters without Borders reiterates its support for the bill’s general principles and endorses its application. However,…

The Argentine media group Clarin obtained an eleventh-hour ruling yesterday delaying the application of a section of the country’s new media law which would have forced it to give up some of its broadcasting licences. The Civil and Commercial Court…

The dilemma of Progressivism Latin America is experiencing a very special time, as everyone knows. We had to bear for nearly 200 years the rigorous, systematic and often brutal application of “The Monroe Doctrine”, until not much more than a…

By Marcela Valente A wide-ranging reform of Argentina’s civil code is looking to replace traditional concepts of parental authority and control with one of parental responsibility, while expressly prohibiting corporal punishment for children and adolescents. “The changes are pursuing a…

By Fabiana Frayssinet A Nigerian diviner dances and sings next to a Brazilian priest of the Candomblé religion, brought to this South American country by African slaves, that is now being rescued from oblivion in school texts on national history…

During the panel on Government Policies, “A new humanism for the New Civilisation”, Tomas Hirsch, Chilean humanist, proposed that, even if governments are doing, and must continue to do, their part to eliminate inequalities, they can’t do it alone.  It’s…

David and Katharine Lowrie have a mission: running 5,000 miles in one year, from the southern tip of Chile to northern Colombia, to benefit the continent’s wildlife and wild places. The intrepid Lawries will finish running the Carretera Austral, Aysén’s…